Kamedulskie sacrum a konserwatorskie profanum, czyli przenosiny księgozbioru Srebrnej Góry do Biblioteki Jagiellońskiej
The Camaldolese sacrum versus the conservator’s prophanum, i.e. the shifting of the library from the Silver Mountain to the Jagiellonian Library

Summary/Abstract: The conservation work connected with the shifting of the Camaldolese library from the Bielany monastery to the stacks of the Jagiellonian Library included: –The overview of the books and the evaluation of the state of preservation of the collection (conservation stocktaking), –Preservation involving the removal of dust and micro-organisms from the bindings of the books as well as from single pages, –The desinfection of the collection, –The preparation of the books for transport. One of the conservation problems that emerged during the execution of the project concerned the difference between the climatic conditions in the place where the books had remained so far and those in the stacks of the Jagiellonian Library. Another issue concerned the increased humidity level of the books. However, the most severe damage was caused by the attacks of insects which had fed on the books. In the situation where the majority of the books had been cleaned and dried but the question of moving them to the Jagiellonian Library still remained uncertain, it was decided that they should be cleansed of insects with carbon dioxide within the walls of the monastery. Especially for this purpose, a special system of “baloon chambers” was invented, all of which were made of PVC membranes. A separate issue of the project involved the preparation of the books for transport. The digital system of registering single volumes, developed in cooperation with the Jagiellonian Library, which allowed to identify particular books at every stage of the work (initial cleaning, inventory control, transport, desinfection, cataloguing etc.), provided an interesting solution to this problem. The last stage of the work consisted in the prevention and conservation of a collection of 23 volumes. The aim of this work was to invent methods of conservation that would cover the most frequent kinds of damages in the Camaldolese collection. The purpose of the project described above was to allow further preservation and safe cataloguing of the Camaldolese book collection in the Jagiellonian Library.

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